wished very much that it would go on, and
I felt as though it had gone away as such visions do. Awhile later, as I
suppose, I awoke quite suddenly, and opened my eyes. There, near to me,
glittering in the full light of the brilliant moon, stood the woman of
my dream, only now her naked breast was covered with a splendid cloak
broidered with silver, and on her dark locks was a feathered headdress
in front of which rose the crescent of the moon, likewise fashioned in
silver. Also in her hand she held a little silver spear.

I stared at her, for move I could not. Then remembering my crazy talk
with Kari, uttered one word, only one. It was--_Quilla_.

She bowed her head and answered in a voice soft as the murmur of the
wind through rushes, speaking in the rich language called Quichua that
Kari had taught me. In this tongue, as I have told, we talked together
for practice during our journeys and on the island. So that now I knew
it well.

"So indeed am I named after my mother, the 'Moon,'" she said. "But how
did you know it, O Wanderer, whose skin is white as the foam of the sea
and whose hair is yellow as the fine gold in the temples?"

"I think you must have told me when you knelt over me just now," I said.

I saw the red blood run to her brow, but she only shook her head, and
answered:

"Nay, my mother, the Moon, must have told you; or perchance you learned
it in the spirit. At least, Quilla am I named and you called me aright."

Now I stood up and stared at her, overcome by the strangeness of the
business, and she stared at me. A marvellously beautiful woman she was
in her dazzling robe and headdress, and lighter coloured than any native
I had seen, almost white, indeed, in the moonlight save for the copper
tinge that marked her race; tall, too, yet not over-tall; slim and
straight as an arrow, but high-breasted and round-limbed, and with a
wild grace in her movements like to that of a hawk upon the wing. Also
to my fancy in her face there was something more than common youthful
beauty, something spiritual, such as great artists show upon the carven
countenances of saints.

Indeed she might well have been one whose human blood was mixed with
some other alien strain--as she had called herself, a daughter of the
Moon.

A question rose to my lips and burst from them; it was:

"Tell me, O Quilla, are you wife or maid?"

"Maid am I," she answered, "yet one who is promised as a wife," and she
sighed, then went on